A story in the NY Times has created some buzz around Innocentive recently.
Innocentive allows big companies to post challenges which anybody can then solve in return for cold, hard cash. The challenges are of the ‘come up with a chemical compound that allows x’ and ‘write a white paper on microarray technology’ variety rather than word puzzles or spot the ball, sadly.
If you’re not a bored biochemist or genius inventor then the best thing about the Innocentive site is that it gives you a glimpse of a brighter, happier future, just like Tomorrow’s World on the BBC used to do.
My favourite Innocentive challenges so far:
Bakeable cheese technology
“The Seeker, a Fortune 200 company with more than 30 billion dollars in annual sales, is looking for partners capable of developing a technology for making bakeable cheese fillers for baked snack products.”
Reward to be negotiated.
Skin perfume by oral ingestion
“Compounds able to generate agreeable skin odors after oral ingestion are desired.”
$20k reward.
Flavor Change Technology
“We are looking for a technology that allows a timed-release flavor change to occur in a food product.”
$50k reward.
Neat, Euan. I think ‘neat’ is the only word for it though. Somehow, ‘yummy’ or ‘delicious’ don’t spring to mind. I think it’s wonderful that food science is taking off and that there are incentives for progress, but honestly, I don’t want to eat the results of that progress. I want real food that came from the ground or something that fed on the ground and its products. Timed-release flavor change? Sounds terrifying. There is quite a market for stuff like that though, isn’t there.
Skin perfume by oral ingestion
How about some good old garlic?
Definitely agreeable
Isn’t cheese itself perfectly “bakeable”? Maybe I should submit a proposal.
Yeah, I wondered that too Eva.
To be honest I don’t even really know what baked snacks are… crisps / chips (delete as geographically appropriate)?
the last challenge is interesting; ‘timed-release favour change’? why would anybody want their food to smell different from yesterday?
Maybe the aim is to disguise the smells of decomposing food and thus keep it on the shelves for longer!
Perhaps by “bakeable cheese technology”, they mean an improvement on something like this
Almost any technology, however neolithic, would be a distinct improvement, and I don’t recommend trying them yourself.
James, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had the right idea here, I think. Five words: three course dinner chewing gum.